


Monsters and Daisychains

by scribblemyname



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Aftermath, Angst, Coping, Feels, Friendship, Gen, Nightmares, Post Winter Finale/Season 2, References to Canonical Major Character Death, Special Abilities, Spoilers, Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-02
Updated: 2015-02-02
Packaged: 2018-03-10 05:17:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3278189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/pseuds/scribblemyname
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skye's studying the dots and lines of Coulson's endless etchings for no reason she can define, perched up on the table like she always used to do when Trip would stand beside her and wonder aloud what she expected to find. But there's nothing to find because they already found it. They've been to the city and unlocked the monster inside her, so she stares at the screen with hands idly sketching along on a tablet with the stylus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monsters and Daisychains

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to geckoholic and alphaflyer for the betas!

She dreams about it. She always dreams about it.

She dreams about Trip staring at her, screaming, "Skye, no!" hand outstretched to help her. She dreams of obsidian blooming along his flesh, his body disintegrating in her earthquake, and his mouth turning to ash as he screams.

"No!"

She wakes, throat raw with the same cry as she shoots up out of her covers, hot fear burning along her skin, almost unable to pull enough air into her lungs. _Breathe. Breathe_. It's frantic and ragged and loud in the darkness of far too early in the morning, but it doesn't quite cover the click of the opening door.

Skye scrambles for her nightstand and fumbles the gun into her grip to point it at… May, standing in the doorway. May, calmly stepping forward and wrapping strong fingers around the gun.

"I killed Trip," Skye says. She's shaking as the gun slides from her own trembling fingers into May's steady hand. The heart monitor on her wrist shows a number far too high.

"You'll kill all of us if you don't calm down."

Skye shudders and realizes why she still feels like she's inside the dream, watching Trip shake into pieces, because everything's shaking around her still.

"You're right." She forces herself up, forces herself to breathe as she falls into the taolu May taught her, and forces herself to calm down, steady out. _Just a dream. Just a dream, Skye._ She's breathing.

May does the forms with her in unexpected but comfortable solidarity until the early morning is still and quiet, and Skye feels a little less like a horror walking around in human skin.

"You're not a monster," May says suddenly, with that easy firmness she always has when she knows she's right. May is always right.

"Just an alien," Skye retorts harshly with some of the bite that's been missing since Trip's death. It's rusty, though. The words are actually true.

May smiles at her for the effort. "Inhuman actually, according to Raina."

Skye glances at her heart monitor and it's nice and steady, exactly where it should be. She brings her chin up and makes herself look May straight in the eyes as she asks, "You going to keep standing guard outside my door?" Her voice doesn't even wobble.

May isn't smiling now, but there isn't any wobble in her either, in tone or expression. "Do you want me to stop?"

It takes Skye aback, but she chews it over, spits it out. "No."

May nods, once, approving. "Good."

—

She's studying the dots and lines of Coulson's endless etchings for no reason she can define, perched up on the table like she always used to do when Trip would stand beside her and wonder aloud what she expected to find. But there's nothing to find because they already found it. They've been to the city and unlocked the monster inside her, so she stares at the screen with hands idly sketching along on a tablet with the stylus.

She's quiet because there's no one to talk to and still because there's nothing to do. Which is why she hears clearly when Bobbi and Lance's raised voices come close enough for her to make out the words.

"Mack is not a monster."

Skye flinches at the fury in Bobbi's voice.

"Bobbi, be serious. He's just like Skye's father. He gets those shakes and he knows things. He turns violent when he gets emotional. He's a berserker."

"He didn't murder anyone."

"He _tried_ to murder you!"

An angry pause. Skye's skin is crawling with the tension.

"Bobbi. I _want_ to believe he isn't—"

"Then believe it. You _want_ to trust me. You _want_ to believe in him. Get your own act together or get out of my life."

"This is what always happens. I'm honest with you, and you just shove me out."

"Oh, so it's all my fault now. I'm the one who wants you gone? Maybe if you stopped always keeping your options open…"

Their voices fade as the argument moves past her.

Skye stares down at her tablet. She wants to hurl it at the screen. She'd been drawing. She stares at what she created and something sick settles inside her.

Daisies. Chains of daisies.

_I'll always love you, Daisy._

She curses and deletes the note.

—

Skye doesn't see Mack. Mack doesn't see her.

When Skye wept over the ashes on her hands that remained of the body Trip no longer had, Mack stared at her in horror. She never does know whether it was the monster in him or the monster in her that prompted it.

She grieves for days, then weeks. She hides her burgeoning 'gift' in the heart monitor and the calm breathing that she brings to sniping and combat and codes. She hears enough about Mack to know he has changed their team as much as she has. He hides his berserker rage in calm breathing and solitude and work in the lab. She hears enough to know that Bobbi is his outer guard and Fitz is ever at his side.

"He's the only one who was there for me," she overheard Fitz telling Jemma, before he walked away without seeing the way her eyes glistened.

—

"Skye." Jemma's soft voice cuts through the quiet in the kitchen area. "What are you doing?"

Skye looks up sharply, then down, following Jemma's gaze to the string of flowers she's been steadily inking into a napkin. They're daisies again, she realizes, and her hand clenches against the tabletop.

Jemma looks up and sees Fitz and Mack passing the kitchen. She chews her lower lip, then excuses herself gently.

Skye crumples the napkin into a messy ball.

"We're all going insane," Lance states as he drops into the seat Jemma just vacated.

Skye clenches her jaw. She doesn't need to deal with this and opens her mouth to tell him so, but never gets the chance.

"My relationship with my ex-wife is nose-diving, which I should have expected." He tips back in his chair. "My best friend is _literally_ going crazy, and you're doing your d—est not to bring this whole place down around our ears, which is much appreciated as you're actually succeeding…" He takes a breath.

Skye takes the opportunity to interject, "You know, I don't like you."

He raises his brows, but doesn't even hesitate replying. "Well, you never did, so it's not like a catastrophic loss of companionship." He smiles, even at his own expense.

It makes Skye laugh slightly and blink at him. "Is this what Bobbi sees in you?" she asks. "That every once in a blue moon, you're not a total jerk?"

He leans forward conspiratorially. "It's the dark moments that make the good ones shine brighter."

She huffs another laugh and gathers up the remnants of her breakfast. She tosses the napkin on the way out.

—

Breathe. In, out, even.

She watches her heart monitor as she trains with kicks and jabs and finally the gun cage. Melinda May, ever watchful, stops by outside on occasion so that Skye can see the promise that she'll be neutralized if she becomes dangerous.

But nothing shakes, the ground doesn't crumble, and finally she stops seeing Trip die in her eyes.

—

Skye waits until she knows Coulson's busy before she delivers the report he asked for and turns immediately on her heel, but she doesn't make it out. He excuses Bobbi and calls her back instead.

Bobbi shoots her a meaningless smile and disappears. Skye grudgingly returns.

"Are you okay, Skye?" Coulson asks, meaning it. He leans forward, her report absently held in his hand as if it means nothing, and his gaze full of concern. It's obvious how sincerely he means it and that just makes it grate the more.

It sounds like a desk drawer slides open, just.

Skye grits her teeth. "Fine, Coulson. Except that my name isn't even Skye."

Coulson sighs deeply and tosses the report she'd handed him onto his blotter.

Skye forces herself to stay calm. Breathe in, out. The drawer slides shut again, and she thinks she's doing a terrible job.

"Do you want to change it?" Coulson asks. "We can all call you Daisy."

Something inside her growls like a monster, but all she says is, "Skye."

He gives her that same look May did and says the same word. "Good. You're a valuable agent and someone I care deeply about. _This_ doesn't change anything."

He means it. He actually believes it, and she doesn't succeed at strangling the bitter laugh in the back of her throat because _this_ changes everything, whether they like it or not.

"Really?" she demands. "Is Mack like my father or am I? Does it even matter?"

They're all changed, all different, and the ground beneath her feet is no longer solid.

_I'll always love you, Daisy._

"We're living in a powder keg and everyone here knows it." Skye knows that Lance just said aloud what everyone else is thinking—about her, about Mack.

Coulson looks like he's searching for the right words, but she doesn't want to hear them.

"Permission to leave?" she asks. She's holding onto her composure thinly. Nothing's shaking except her insides twisting and churning.

He sighs at last. "Fine."

She goes.

—

She's digging through her notes and finds an entire yellow sheet of doodled daisy chains on top of her pad. She starts to rip it off, crumple it, but then stops and leaves it.

—

Coulson had begged May to kill him if things got too bad. They had to lock him up, to fight for his sanity. Mack is alive, but Trip is gone, and they can't get him back.

Skye strides into the awkward lab space where Fitz has kicked out everyone but Mack.

She hates the way Mack's gaze tracks her as she comes in. She sees an ancient knowingness behind those eyes that treats her differently than anyone else. She's special. She's a monster. She can hold the Diviner in her bare hands while Trip crumbles into ash feet away. Whatever possessed Mack—and perhaps her father before him—knows the special ones.

She stops at a distance that stays out of the 'I could hurt you' zone. "I'm glad you're not dead," she says.

Mack stares at her for a long moment. She thinks he isn't going to say anything, but he gets this ironic sort of smile that just seems so utterly fitting.

"Me too."

She nods curtly and heads back the way she came.

—

She doesn't expect to sleep any better. She straps on a heart monitor and lays back on the bed, staring at the ceiling and all too aware that May is there outside her door.

She closes her eyes to greet the nightmares.

 


End file.
